Thanksgiving

We got to celebrate 2 Thanksgivings this year.  We had Thanksgiving dinner with Jeremy's family on Thursday and my family on Friday.  It was nice to be able to spend so much time with both sides of the family this year.

Clara was my big helper this year.  She insisted on helping me make all our assigned foods.

We had Jeremy's Thanksgiving dinner at a church building to accommodate everyone who was coming.  My favorite part was all the games we got to play after we all were full.  It was such a fun day.

I also loved that Clara had a ton of room to go play.  She spent most of her time with her cousin Caden, and her second cousin, Olivia.  We hardly ever saw these 3.

After dinner on Friday, we all decided to watch Brave.  Most hadn't ever seen it before.  There's nothing like relaxing and watching a movie when your belly is stuffed!  :)

And I had to take a picture of Joe's shirt.  He got it as a baby shower gift, and since it has to do with Thanksgiving, probably won't wear it a whole lot more! 

Clara was lying on our floor one night and wanted me to lay Joseph right by her.  It wasn't long before he was getting a lot of hugs and kisses!

Joe is getting so strong!  He can now hold his own weight on his legs, and he can almost sit by himself! (Love his face as he's standing....)

And since Clara refused to let us take pictures without her, she kept jumping in.  Oh how I love that she has to be the center of attention!

Christmas Time

So the jobs Jeremy thought he had lined up fell through this week.  So we are officially unemployed again.  I feel like this is a regular occurrence in our marriage.  Surprisingly, I'm not nearly as stressed as I usually am.  We'll see how I feel if he still doesn't have a job next month....

We are getting new neighbors!  We woke up Saturday morning to loud noises.  When I looked out the window, I was surprised to see construction vehicles.  So we ran to our toy room window and have a great view.  I'm kinda excited to watch a house being built.  Is that weird?

I decided to decorate our house for Christmas early this year.  I bribed Clara with the fact that if she didn't complain or cry that she had to attend church, we would put the Christmas Tree up when we got home.  She was so excited that we just had very minimal issues at church.

I love how our stockings turned out this year too.  I was afraid that Joe's stocking looked too different from ours.  But I think it blends in nicely!

And my favorite picture taken during the festivities is of my wonderful Clara and her sparkling personality.

And lastly, I couldn't resist letting the whole world see another picture of my very cute baby boy!  :)

Good-bye Car

We sold our Volvo this week.  We had taken it in for the safety and emission requirements to renew the car's registration for the year and it didn't pass safety.  There were a couple of things wrong with it and the cost to fix it was more than what Jeremy and I were willing to put into the car.  After a few weeks of discussing what to do, we put it up for sale on KSL classifieds and sold it the very next day.  Even though I definitely had a love/hate relationship with this car, I shed a few tears when she drove away.  Clara was also sad until the extremely nice couple who bought our car explained that they just got a brand new puppy and it would be excited to ride in the way back of the car.  Clara was then willing to let the car go, if it would make a puppy happy.  The couple even came back to our house a few days later and brought the puppy so Clara could see how happy the puppy was.

Joseph was supposed to have his surgery this week.  (He was getting his ear tag removed.) However, the day before he was supposed to have it done, the receptionist from his Dr called.  The anesthesiologist didn't want to perform the surgery.  He saw that Joseph was premature and didn't want to put operate until he was at least 6 months old.  I started crying and explained how if we did it now, it would be a lot cheaper since we've already met our out of pocket costs for the year.  And since Jeremy's last day of work is tomorrow, we're just not sure how insurance and things are going to play out.  The receptionist said she would see what she could do and call me back.  A few hours later, she called back and explained that now both the doctor and the anesthesiologist didn't want to do the surgery because it was just cosmetic and would prefer to wait.  So Joseph gets to keep his uniqueness a little longer.  Luckily, since he's gotten such chubby cheeks, no one notices it anymore.

The first snowfall of the year (with accumulation) came today.  Clara was so excited to go outside and play in the snow.  We got her all dressed up and she ran out the door.

It wasn't long before she had made a snow ball

and threw it at me!  :)

Joe had his 4 month check-up yesterday.  He now weighs in at 13 lbs 5 oz!  He's officially on the charts with the rest of his birth age peers and not just his gestational age peers.  The doctor came in and said, "Well, it looks like we don't have to worry about poor weight gain with him."  The crazy thing is that he's still only eating about 2.5 oz every 3 hours.  Chubbiness is just in the genes I guess.

Hair Cuts, Halloween, and Happiness

The day before Halloween, I got sick of my hair.  I'm shedding like crazy and my hair was so long that my house had gross hairballs all over it.  So I decided to donate my hair and have smaller hairballs :).

We had dinner with my sister for Halloween.  We had Mummy Dogs, Goblin Eyes, carrot sticks, and apple slices.  We always love getting to spend time with extended family!

Clara has been earning prizes for learning to read.  I needed some motivation for her to want to sit with me everyday.  So a long time ago, I took her to the dollar store where she picked out some prizes.  The day before Halloween, Clara earned a prized and picked out jewelry that she insists are cinderella's.  So she wanted to wear those for Halloween and thus wanted to be Cinderella instead of a ballerina. 

 Here is Cinderella doing a curtsey.

And here's my daughter after we had gotten home from Trick or Treating.

Joseph has been practicing reaching for things.  He's still not very good at it, but this is a picture of the first time he actually got one of his toys.  (Sorry it's blurry - for some reason he didn't want to hold the toy still while I took a picture...)

Joseph has the biggest eyes.  He frequently raises his eyebrows so that his eyes look huge, but I haven't been able to get a picture of that yet.  I finally did it the other day.  I think it is so funny when he looks at me with those huge eyes and chubby cheeks!